I think that the real difference between porn and art, (or erotica as artistically rendered porn is called), is that when one imagines the person who is the subject of porn, it isn't really a person as much as a passive subject of fantasy meant for physical release. However, when one imagines looking into the eyes of the erotic subject, we give them a dimension of humanity by imagining a real living person there. By this definition, it seems that our personal interpretation alone is the line of distinction. Anything can be porn, and anything can be erotica.

When erotica is the subject, we don't just imagine congress with two-dimensional sources of physical release. It is more than that; the extra dimension that makes our hearts pound. We imagine a living person, someone else with their own thought, mind, emotions, loves and needs. We imagine someone else who also happens to communicate their erotic nature with a way of appearing, such as dress, body language, color of hair and eyes, demeanor, et cetera.

Even the silly and rank cartoons in mens' magazines communicate the erotic nature of the artist, the human being behind the art. He or she has a sense of humor, in itself an erotic state of being, showing the nature of the person who is communicating their sexuality.

Depending on the needs and natures of any given person, every line of distinction is different. But I know that the glowing skin tones of a painted woman was made by artists with acknowledgment of her humanity, in the fashion their culture permitted. No artist can put their soul into painting another person hair by hair without drawing their soul into the canvas. I believe that I can see when artists have done that, drawing the soul of their subject into their work, or else by drawing their own soul and their urges and needs into their work. This, by my distinction, is erotica.

But for anyone who wishes to make it so, it is also porn. The human ability to mentally separate ourselves from other persons, and objectify them, is a survival instinct which works in a climate of physical or emotional survival, but it is not one which I find very erotic. I believe that all men are capable of emotional depth of feeling, and choose to have that depth in some capacity, but in our culture we tend to pigeonhole photographic erotica as objectified matter, believing it an appropriate response, and sadly treat its subjects as such.

The bottom line is whether or not a person is willing to acknowledge that porn is people.

Alliekatt